Lots of times, sad to say it, have I seen horrible things happen to the Outlook Anywhere, Exchange webmail, and smartphone connection capability of SBS 2003. Microsoft telephone techs have huge lists of settings to check. Unfortunately, so far as I have been able to ascertain, we don’t. Today something interesting happened which seemed worth keeping. Here’s the scenario:

1. Outlook Anywhere didn’t work to the newest clients running Outlook 2003, but did work to three or four of the older ones. Many things were tried. It became a working theory, that the server was behind some of the clients in critical updates, perhaps some involved in authentication between clients and Exchange.
2. Found that the SBS 2003 server needed lots of updates, including several to Exchange. Installed all of them except the .NET and IE 8.
3. After the updates, Exchange and the related services didn’t work at all. Rebooted. No change.
4. Restarted Exchange services. Exchange began working to Outlook clients. No webmail, Outlook Anywhere, or smartphones.
5. All three of the above, depend on IIS for data transfer. Studied IIS.
6. “Default Web Site” was not running, all the others were. “Default Web Site” contains all of the things we need, including “Exchange”, “Exweb”, “OMA”, and others. ## Checked all of them, made sure that all IPs were permitted access.
7. Tried to turn on “Default Web Site”. It said there was an IP conflict with one or more of the others.
8. Turned off all of the others.
9. Turned on “Default Web Site”. Worked that time.
10. Tested. Webmail and the others still not working.
11. Restarted IIS. Bits of Exchange and other things restarted along with it.
12. Tested. Still didn’t work.
13. Decided to lay things down, get some help elsewhere, possibly a call to Microsoft.
14. Five minutes later, received a call. Everything working!!!